Afghanistan civilian casualties statistics

"The Taliban and other anti-government elements have been blamed for 2,080 civilians who were killed in Afghanistan last year - a sharp rise of 28% on 2009. This accounted for 75% of all deaths whereas pro-government forces totalled 440 civilian killings.

Suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have killed the most Afghan civilians according to the UN, with 1,141 losing their life as a result. In what the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan name the most 'alarming trend' is the 462 civilians that were assassinated by anti-government elements - up a huge 105% from 2009. Southern Afghanistan witnessed half of these with Helmand province and Kandahar province proving the most dangerous."

"The White House has set out 46 metrics for success in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which Foreign Policy has acquired. Now that we know exactly how the Obama administration perceives victory in the countries and how it is setting out to achieve it, what does that mean for the Afghan war and for US national security?"

"Within a few years, that flying object overhead might not be a bird or a plane, but an unmanned aircraft.
Drones, perhaps best known for their combat missions in Afghanistan, are increasingly looking to share room in U.S. skies with passenger planes. And that's prompting safety concerns."

"The following graphic lists the ten most/least corrupt countries based on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2011. The Corruption Perception Index assigns countries and territories with scores between 0 (highly corrupt) and 10 (very clean). New Zealand tops the list as the least corrupt country, while North Korea and Somalia are all the way at the bottom."

"The Obama administration struck a largely symbolic blow Friday against what it considers the most violent and intransigent enemy of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, declaring that it will add the Pakistan-based Haqqani network to its list of terrorist organizations.
Ordered by Congress last month to label the Taliban affiliate an official terrorist group or explain why it didn't qualify, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton informed lawmakers that she will designate the Haqqani group the 52nd entry on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list."

"The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan established by the United Nations Security Council in December of 2001. The graphic below shows the gradual increase in number of ISAF forces over a 10-year period. It also breaks down the number of fatalities suffered by nationality."

An article detailing the current situation in Afghanistan. Mr. Woodward concludes that President Obama's order of troops is simply staving off defeat, that with the current strategy and number of troops the war is going to be a long, hard fight.

"Today on Good Morning America, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) refused to call the situation in Afghanistan 'precarious and urgent,' but admitted that 'We have a lot of work to do.' He warned of a 'very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.'"

"The ability to visit a foreign country without the cost and hassle of obtaining a visa is a welcome bonus for any traveller. It is also a barometer of a country's international alliances and relations. A report released on August 25th by Henley & Partners, a consultancy, shows that Britons have the fewest visa restrictions of the 190-odd countries (and territories) for which data are...

"Barack Obama will end months of uncertainty over his Afghanistan policy when he announces tonight that he is to deploy 30,000 troops from the marines and army, in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the war being lost. The extra troops, in addition to the 21,000 dispatched in March, will mean America's engagement in Afghanistan will have doubled since he became president in January [2009]."

"President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgment of the shifting threat in the region and the fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America. Asserting that the country that served as a base for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks no longer...

A review of President Obama's plan to add an additional 20,000 troops with the goal of recruiting and training more Afghan troops so that they can eventually stand on their own without a large American presence in Afghanistan.

"One in three U.S. veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and a majority think that after 10 years of combat America should be focusing less on foreign affairs and more on its own problems, according to an opinion survey released Wednesday.

The findings highlight a dilemma for the Obama administration and Congress as they...

"If we lose the devout Afghan Pashtuns and start seeing large swaths of Pashtun society siding openly with the Taliban against us, while savage intercommunal hostilities break out among Afghanistan's peoples, then we will have to debate withdrawing from Central Asia. But we haven't seen that. And unless we withdraw--or persist in a counterproductive military strategy (which, thanks to the...

"As the 2012 State of the Union approaches, the public continues to give the highest priority to economic issues. Fully 86% say that strengthening the economy should be a top priority for the president and Congress this year, and 82% rate improving the job situation as a top priority. None of the other 20 issues tested in this annual survey rate as a top priority for more than 70% of Americans...

"The step was a reversal of the Taliban’s longstanding public denials that they were involved in, or even willing to consider, talks related to their insurgency, and it had the potential to revive a reconciliation effort that stalled in September, with the assassination of the head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council."

This article analyzes the overall philosophy of defeating terrorism. It criticizes the idea that greater prosperity in Afghanistan and Pakistan (or other parts of the Middle East) will rid the world of Islamic terrorism.

"In one of the most egregious violations of the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech seen in quite some time, Tarek Menanna, an American Muslim, was convicted this week in a federal court in Boston and then sentenced yesterday to 17 years in prison. He was found guilty of supporting Al Qaeda (by virtue of translating Terrorists' documents into English and expressing 'sympathetic views'...

"We believe that the United States has a powerful national interest in Afghanistan, in depriving Al Qaeda of a safe haven on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This country would also do enormous damage to its moral and strategic standing if it now simply abandoned the Afghan people to the Taliban’s brutalities. But, like many Americans, we are increasingly confused and anxious...

"Improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.'s, are home-made bombs. Often used by insurgent groups or rebels who wage non-traditional warfare, they can be made from almost any material and are designed to kill or maim."

"In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home."

The U.S. Army wants to purchase nearly 1,900 infantry combat vehicles for an estimated $20 billion to replace an aging Bradley fleet that’s been vulnerable to roadside-bomb attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has...

"The recent assassination of political strongman Ahmed Wali Karzai put in plain sight for Americans something in Afghanistan that has been off the radar for many: drug-related corruption. Half-brother to the president and head of the elected provincial council in Kandahar, the late Karzai was known in southern Afghanistan for his wealth and power—both of which, some allege, he derived in part...

"The Taliban and other anti-government elements have been blamed for 2,080 civilians who were killed in Afghanistan last year - a sharp rise of 28% on 2009. This accounted for 75% of all deaths whereas pro-government forces totalled 440 civilian killings."

This chart provides various Afghan health statistics from 2003 to 2010. These statistics suggest that life expectancy dramatically increased during this time period, while infant mortality dramatically decreased.

"This map shows the location of every improvised explosive device (IED) attack logged by the database. It includes IED explosions and ambushes (where an explosion includes Taliban small arms fire and RPG attacks, for instance. It exculdes hoaxes and suicide bombers."

"This is the Microsoft PowerPoint slide which drove US military General Stanley McChrystal to declare that 'When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war' at a briefing in Kabul. It led to big questions about the world's reliance on the presentation software but illustrated the challenge facing Nato there."

"The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan established by the United Nations Security Council in December of 2001. The graphic below shows the gradual increase in number of ISAF forces over a 10-year period. It also breaks down the number of fatalities suffered by nationality."

"RC-SW had the highest level of violent activity among regional commands; however, in the first quarter of 2011, its relative share of overall violence was slightly reduced due to on-going operations in Regional Commands South and East."

"According to DoS’s 'Country Report on Terrorism 2010,' the number of terrorist attacks in Iraq dropped by more than 10% from 2009 to 2010. But as a percentage of all attacks worldwide, violence in Iraq increased by more than 5%. Table 4.5 shows attacks since 2006."

"As noted in a number of SIGAR’s quarterly reports, it is not possible to definitively measure progress toward the U.S. goal of increasing employment in the agriculture sector or any other sector because of the lack of available data."

"The Pew survey found that veterans are ambivalent about the net value of the wars, although they generally were more positive about Afghanistan, which has been a more protracted but less deadly conflict for U.S. forces."

"The UNHCR says that 'by the end of 2010, three quarters of the world's refugees were residing in a country neighbouring their own' - neighbouring Pakistan and Iran were the refuge for over 2.7m Afghans in 2010."

As the United States prepares to exit Afghanistan, the nation must begin to face some serious problems. Government corruption is out of control, poverty is still rampant, and the drug market (particularly opium) is thriving.

"Although the footnotes to the Afghanistan Index document our sources in detail, it is worth noting here a few broad points. The majority of our information comes from the U.S. Government, though we must often analyze it and process it further to show trends over the full period since 2001."

"In 2007, Afghanistan cultivated 193,000 hectares of opium poppies, an increase of 17% over last year. The amount of Afghan land used for opium is now larger than the corresponding total for coca cultivation in Latin America (Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined)."

Following policy reviews in 2009, the Obama Administration asserted that it was pursuing a well-resourced and integrated military-civilian strategy intended to pave the way for a gradual transition to Afghan leadership that will begin in July 2011 and be completed by the end of 2014.

"The boom in drones has stirred a variety of concerns among critics, but the greatest has been over strikes carried out covertly by the CIA under a classified, but widely reported, program of strikes against suspected militants inside Pakistan.

"Czech troops may stay in Afghanistan until the end of 2014. Defence Minister Alexandr Vondra, who is in the United States on a working visit, said he would ask the Czech Parliament to extend their mandate by another 24 months, as their current mandate will expire by the end of the year. However, the opposition has criticized Mr Vondra for announcing his plans without a prior debate in the...

"Between 2004 and 2009, data released by Wikileaks last year shows 24,498 deaths - over 4,000 of them civilians caught up in the conflict. As Barack Obama announces a drawdown of US troops there, we have taken that data and mapped it."

"When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America's wars.

Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday.

A discussion with the Supreme Allied Commander concerning the troop surge called for a the NATO summit in April, Obama's response, and the rather lukewarm response from other NATO allies, including Britain.

"When Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates came to his post two years ago, he recognized a glaring deficiency in the defense budgeting process: 'Those fighting the current war had no seat at the budget table at all.' ...

"I am pleased to submit SIGAR’s quarterly report to the Congress on the U.S. reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. This report details SIGAR’s oversight activities and provides an update on the status of reconstruction programs since our July 30, 2011 report.

"Since the last Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and its Afghan partners have made tangible progress, arresting the insurgents’ momentum in much of the country and reversing it in a number of important areas. The coalition’s efforts have wrested major safe havens from the insurgents’ control, disrupted their...

"In April 2009, then-Secretary of Defense Gates announced he intended to significantly restructure the Army's Future Combat System (FCS) program. The FCS was a multiyear, multibillion dollar program that had been underway since 2000 and was at the heart of the Army's transformation efforts. In lieu of the cancelled FCS manned ground vehicle (MGV), the Army was directed to develop a ground...

"If the administration cannot create an effective, stable, legitimate state and cannot defeat a Taliban insurgency it must find another method of protecting US national security and fulfilling our obligations to the Afghan people. And if it is impossible to build a state or defeat the Taliban, there is no point in deploying a hundred thousand troops or spending hundreds of billions of dollars...

"The United States seeks a relationship with Russia based on cooperation in the pursuit of mutual interests and a frank and open discussion of disagreements based on mutual respect as the two countries seek to address the shared challenges of the 21st century."

"The United States has a vital national security interest in addressing the current and potential security threats posed by extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan, al Qaeda and other groups of jihadist terrorists are planning new terror attacks. Their targets remain the U.S. homeland, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Europe, Australia, our allies in the Middle East, and other targets...

CIA veteran Scheuer examines the ongoing instability in Iraq and argues that the U.S has provided al Qaeda and its allies with the one thing they want most: a safe haven from which to launch operations across borders.

Abdulkader H. Sinno closely examines the fortunes of the various factions in Afghanistan, including the mujahideen and the Taliban, that have been fighting each other and foreign armies since the 1979 Soviet invasion.

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